{"product_id":"the-world-according-to-bertie-isbn-9780307387066","title":"The World According to Bertie","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e44 SCOTLAND STREET - Book 4\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eThe residents and neighbors of 44 Scotland Street and the city of Edinburgh come to vivid life in these gently satirical, wonderfully perceptive serial novels, featuring six-year-old Bertie, a remarkably precocious boy—just ask his mother.  \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThere is never a quiet moment on 44 Scotland Street. In \u003ci\u003eThe World According  to \u003c\/i\u003eBertie, Pat deals with the reappearance of Bruce, which has her heart skipping—and  not in a pleasant way. Angus Lordie's dog Cyril has been taken away by the authorities,  accused of being a serial biter. Unexpectedly, Domenica has offered to help free  him. As usual, Big Lou is still looking for love, and handing out coffee and advice  to the always contemplative Matthew. And Bertie, the beleaguered Italian-speaking  six year old prodigy, now has a little brother, Ulysses, who Bertie hopes will help  distract his pushy mother Irene.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBeautifully observed, cleverly detailed,\u003ci\u003e The  World According to Bertie\u003c\/i\u003e is classic McCall Smith and a treat for his avid fans as  well as his first time readers.\u003c\/p\u003ePraise for the 44 Scotland Street series:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"McCall Smith's assessments of fellow humans are piercing and profound. . . . [His] depictions of Edinburgh are vivid and seamless.\" —\u003ci\u003eSan Francisco Chronicle\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Irresistible. . . . Smith has rendered another winner, packed with the charming characters, piercing perceptions and shrewd yet generous humor that have become his cachet.”\u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eChicago Sun-Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eAlexander McCall Smith\u003c\/b\u003e is the author of the huge international phenomenon The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series and The Sunday Philosophy Club series. He was born in what is now known as Zimbabwe and was a law professor at the University of Botswana and at Edinburgh University. He lives in Scotland.\u003cp\u003eChapter 1.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eIn Hanover Street. Watch Out, Pat, Bruce Is Back . . . Or Is He? \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePat  saw Bruce at ten o’clock on a Saturday morning, or at least that is when she thought  she saw him. An element of doubt there certainly was. This centred not on the time  of the sighting, but on the identity of the person sighted; for this was one of those  occasions when one wonders whether the eye, or even the memory, has played a trick.  And such tricks can be extraordinary, as when one is convinced that one has seen  the late General de Gaulle coming out of a cinema, or when, against all reasonable  probability, one thinks one has spotted Luciano Pavarotti on a train between Glasgow  and Paisley; risible events, of course, but ones which underline the proposition  that one’s eyes are not always to be believed.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eShe saw Bruce while she was travelling  on a bus from one side of Edinburgh – the South Side, where she now lived – to the  New Town, on the north side of the city, where she worked three days a week in the  gallery owned by her boyfriend, Matthew. The bus had descended with lumbering stateliness  down the Mound, past the National Gallery of Scotland, and had turned into Hanover  Street, narrowly missing an insouciant pedestrian at the corner. Pat had seen the  near-miss – it was by the merest whisker, she thought – and had winced, but it was  just at that moment, as the bus laboured up Hanover Street towards the statue of  George IV, that she saw a young man walking in the opposite direction, a tall figure  with Bruce’s characteristic en brosse hairstyle and wearing precisely the sort of  clothes that Bruce liked to wear on a Saturday: a rugby jersey celebrating Scotland’s  increasingly ancient Triple Crown victory and a pair of stone-coloured trousers.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHer eye being caught by the rugby jersey and the stone-coloured trousers, she turned  her head sharply. Bruce! But now she could see only the back of his head, and after  a moment she could not see even that; Bruce, or his double, had merged into a knot  of people standing on the corner of Princes Street and Pat lost sight of him. She  looked ahead. The bus would stop in a few yards; she could disembark and make her  way down to Princes Street to see if it really was him. But then she reminded herself  that if she did that she would arrive late at the gallery, and Matthew needed her  to be there on time; he had stressed that. He had an appointment, he said, with a  client who was proposing to place several important Colourist pictures on the market.  She did not want to hold him up, and quite apart from that there was the question  of whether she would want to see Bruce, even if it proved to be him. She thought  on balance that she did not.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBruce had been her flatmate when she had first moved  into 44 Scotland Street. At first, she had been rather in awe of  him – after all,  he was so confident in his manner, so self-assured – and she at the time had been  so much more diffident. Then things had changed. Bruce was undoubtedly good-looking  – a fact of which he was fully aware and of which he was very willing to take advantage;  he knew very well that women found him attractive, and he assumed that Pat would  prove no exception. Unfortunately, it transpired that he was right, and Pat found  herself drawn to Bruce in a way which she did not altogether like. All this could  have become very messy, but at the last moment, before her longing had been translated  into anything beyond mere looking, she had come to her senses and decided that Bruce  was an impossible narcissist. She fought to free herself of his spell, and she did.  And then, having lost his job at the firm of surveyors (after being seen enjoying  an intimate lunch in the Café St Honoré with the wife of the firm’s senior partner),  Bruce decided that Edinburgh was too small for him and had moved to London. People  who do that often then discover that London is too big for them, much to the amusement  of those who stayed behind in Edinburgh in the belief that it was just the right  size. This sometimes leads to the comment that the only sensible reason for leaving  Scotland for London was to take up the job of prime minister, a remark that might  have been made by Samuel Johnson, had he not been so prejudiced on this particular  matter and thought quite the opposite.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePat had been relieved that Bruce had gone  to London, and it had not occurred to her that he might return. It did not matter  much to her, of course, as she moved in different circles from those frequented by  Bruce, and she would not have to mix with him even if he did return. But at the same  time she felt slightly unsettled by the possible sighting, especially as the experience  made her feel an indefinable excitement, an increase in heart rate, that was not  altogether welcome. Was it just the feeling one gets on meeting with an old lover,  years afterwards? Try as one might to treat such occasions as ordinary events, there  is a thrill which marks them out from the quotidian. And that is what Pat felt now.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eShe completed the rest of the bus journey down to Dundas Street in a thoughtful  state. She imagined what she might say if she were to meet him and what he in turn  might say to her. Would he have been improved by living in London, or would he have  become even worse? It was difficult to tell. There must be those for whom living  in London is an enriching experience, and there must be those who are quite unchanged  by it. Pat had a feeling that Bruce would not have learned anything, as he had never  shown any signs of learning anything when he was in Edinburgh. He would just be Bruce.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eShe got off her bus a few steps from Matthew’s gallery. Through the window, she  saw Matthew at his desk, immersed in paperwork. She looked at him fondly from a distance:  dear Matthew, she thought; dear Matthew, in your distressed-oatmeal sweater, so ordinary,  so safe; fond thoughts, certainly, but unaccompanied by any quickening of the pulse.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Anchor","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304332710117,"sku":"NP9780307387066","price":17.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780307387066.jpg?v=1767742307","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-world-according-to-bertie-isbn-9780307387066","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}